Success in Hillary Challenge Six hour Adventure Race

The Senior Adventure Race team participated in the Hillary Challenge Six hour Adventure Race in Rotorua on 24 June.

The adventure race consisted of two stages; the first a 3.5-hour foot Rogaine, where the students had to navigate around the Whakarewarewa Forest, and the second being a mountain bike stage with mystery activities thrown into challenge the teams’ problem solving, team work, compass bearing, and pacing knowledge. 

The team consisted of Gemma Roberts (Upham House), Emma Hjorth (Mansfield), Shelley Pfister (Snell), Krystal Clark (Rutherford), Cole Brown (Snell), Jonathan Li (Snell), Matthew Wilson (Kupe) and Riley Kingham (Snell). 

The team trained hard for this event with four of the eight members returning from past years. The long training runs, endurance building, and team problem solving was worth it as Macleans College has now earned a spot in the highly sought after Hillary Challenge Final to be held in Tongariro National Park in 2019. 

Only twelve teams nationwide are accepted to this five day adventure race. This is an incredible feat given this was only the third year that Macleans College has participated which stands testimony to the incredible calibre of the team. 

The event was gruelling as the athletes forced themselves to battle up and down muddy and technical slopes, finding isolated points throughout the forest, all while ensuring the team made it back to the checkpoints in time as to not take point penalties for late arrival. 

Although thoroughly exhausted the team was elated to finish and took away some amazing memories and sense of accomplishment. This was to be doubled when the results were released on the following day when they found out they had qualified.

Many thanks to Mrs Durham and Mr Hey for their continued support.